"Starbuck!"
Whirling around, he saw Starbuck standing by a partially demolished pillar. Next to him stood Athena, Dietra, Brie, and other Galactica warriors. They looked terrible, their faces weary and haggard.
"What happened?" Apollo said, rushing to Starbuck.
Starbuck looked skyward, his eyes rueful.
"We lost some good pilots up there."
Athena broke away from the group and joined her father. She buried her head in his shoulder and began to sob.
"I heard from Colonel Tigh," Starbuck said. His voice was soft, serious, laconic. "He said he'd like us off the surface and underway as soon as possible. He's anticipating reinforcements from the Cylons, a new attack."
"He's right," Adama said, the first words he'd spoken since they'd left the tomb. "Let's leave the surface as quickly as possible. Assemble everyone at the shuttle. The shuttle is still functioning, is it not?"
"They didn't score a hit on it, sir."
"A small consolation, but we can give thanks."
Starbuck suggested that some of the warriors make a final survey of the camp to see if there were any more survivors.
"Everybody we found is at the shuttle already," he said. "Be careful. One of our pilots observed a couple of Cylon ships who weren't part of the attack force land in an area beyond the pyramid. Keep a sharp lookout, just in case it's true. Some of those red lights may be wandering around here someplace."
After the search party went off, Adama ordered the rest of them to proceed to the shuttle. They all tried to walk fast, but events had taken their toll. Apollo felt a desperate urge to sleepwalk all the way. Starbuck, his voice raspy with exhaustion, muttered to himself:
"Can't say I'll miss this place. Would've liked a chance to look around a bit and—Apollo!"
Apollo spun around, alerted by the shift in Starbuck's voice from weariness to agitation. The red lights on their helmets shining, catching pieces of sand and debris still floating in the air, two Cylon warriors lumbered toward them, laser rifles held in their thick arms and—abruptly—firing. Apollo moved sideways, and heard the sizzle of the laser beam striking a pillar next to him. Bits of stone fell around his head. Drawing his pistol, he returned fire. To his left Starbuck had already started shooting. The ambushers disappeared behind a pile of stone blocks.
Apollo gestured the rest of the group to cover while he and Starbuck edged forward, from one heap of rubble to another.
"I can get a better angle from that rise over there," Starbuck said. "Cover me."
As soon as he stuck his head above the rubble pile, a beam of laser fire buzzed by him.
"I think they're suggesting I take the long way round."
Apollo eased toward the side of the rubble heap to lay down a barrage of cover fire for Starbuck's maneuver. The lieutenant was halfway across the street when a Cylon appeared from behind the triangular remains of a building corner and took a bead on him. Starbuck tried to dodge and caught his foot in a crack in the roadway. He fell heavily, his face grimacing in pain. Apollo quickly dropped the Cylon before he could get off another shot at the helpless warrior.
"I've done something to my ankle," Starbuck shouted.
"Wait, I'll be right there," Apollo said.
He was almost at Starbuck's side when Serina screamed:
"No, Apollo. Look out! The roof."
He felt laser heat nearly singeing his chest as he pivoted and saw a flash of metal—his enemy ducking beneath the cover afforded by a roof overhang.
"Can you crawl?" he said to Starbuck.
"I'll do my best."
Crouching, Apollo kept a watchful eye on the roof as Starbuck pulled himself up to all fours and began to crawl toward the nearest intact building. Serina came running out from her hiding place in a doorway, her gun drawn.
"Go back, Serina," Apollo yelled.
"No! You guys need all the protection you can get."
Serina joined him and took up position on the other side of Starbuck, who continued to move forward, dragging his hurt ankle. At the same time, Athena made her way to the pile of rubble and fanned her pistol toward the perimeter. In the silence the only sound was Starbuck crawling.
"This is too slow," Starbuck muttered. "The pain's gone down. I think I can limp the rest of the way. Help me up."
Serina offered her free arm and Starbuck pulled himself to his feet. Although he could barely put pressure on his left leg he moved it anyway, wincing with his first step.
"Let Apollo support you," Serina said. Starbuck put his arm on Apollo's shoulder and the captain bore his weight. They had almost reached the building when Athena started shooting. Four new Cylons had suddenly materialized near the colonnade. Beyond them was an incongruous robotlike figure, shadowy in the distance. It seemed to wear a red robe and have a different kind of light in its headgear. Laser fire erupted simultaneously from the weapons of the four Cylons.
"Get him inside," Serina shouted, turning toward the new ambushers. "I'll cover."
Apollo hesitated, intending to order her to take care of Starbuck while he took on the attackers, but there was no time to switch. He hefted Starbuck through the building's dark doorway, propped him against a wall, then returned to the street. Serina crouched behind a fallen pillar. He ran to her side, fell down beside her.
"Got one," she muttered without looking at him. "Impressed?"
"You stay out of sight. My turn now."
"Don't play hero. We'll do this together, all of us. Nobody gets to retreat. By the way, I love you."
"What a time to—"
"Shut up and—oh my God! Look out!"
She pointed her pistol over his shoulder and shot. The Cylon who'd tried to shoot them in the back spun around, sparks flying from the wide crease her shot had caused in his metal battlesuit. The creature was not disabled. After it regained its balance it kept on coming, firing a blast that just missed both of them.
Serina fired again. This time the Cylon fell, with a resounding thump, to the ground.
"One more Cylon warrior sent to his—oh!"
Her cry was small, as if just a twinge of pain, but she arched her back and went limp, falling sideways across the pillar.
"Serina," Apollo cried. "Serina!"
She smiled up at him briefly, then her eyes glazed over and closed. She was unconscious.
Angrily Apollo started firing wildly. His bursts allowed Athena to scramble forward and add her own well-aimed shots. The two of them, brother and sister, stood on either side of the street, blasting away at any sign of metal, any hint of Cylon. It was a proper shootout, and a wild one. Suddenly Apollo was conscious of Starbuck yelling:
"Hey! Stop! They're dead. All of them."
Apollo dropped his pistol to his side and looked ahead, where the remaining Cylon warriors did indeed lie dead in the roadway. But it was not, as Starbuck had said, all of them. The mysterious robotlike figure, its strange lights dimming, faded into the shadows and vanished. Normally, Apollo might have pursued him, or it, but now he could only fall to his knees and embrace his limp, unconscious wife.
Back on the Galactica, time seemed to speed up. Things happened too quickly. Even now, Apollo's memory could not assimilate all the events, all the details.
He remembered waiting outside the entrance to the life station. Boomer and Tigh paced the corridor, while Starbuck, his ankle heavily bandaged, leaned against a wall and tried to comfort Apollo.
The door opened. Cassiopeia came out, tears sparkling her eyes.
"It's going to be all right," Starbuck said, getting to Cassiopeia before Apollo, in spite of his game leg. "Isn't it?"
Cassiopeia buried her head in Starbuck's chest. Apollo started to run to the life station door, when his father, coming along the corridor with Boxey in his arms, yelled:
"Wait!"
Apollo halted at the door, glared at his father.
"It's my right," he said. "I've got to be with her."
"You will, I promise you. But give Dr. S
alik every chance."
Boxey, incongruously, was smiling. Of course, nobody had wanted to tell him how serious his mother's condition was. Apollo felt he should tell the boy immediately, but the words stuck in his throat. Starbuck whispered something in Cassiopeia's ear, probably asking her to look cheerful, since she turned toward Apollo with a forced smile on her face.
"Hi, Starbuck," Boxey said, leaping down from Adama's arms. "I heard you did good."
"Well, ah, you know how it is. When you're great, you're great."
"I want to hear all about it after I see Mother." Starbuck struggled to stay smiling. Apollo was about to embrace Boxey when Dr. Salik opened the life station door and said it was okay to go in now. His eyes betrayed no clue to Serina's condition.
Apollo shoved past the doctor and hurried to Serina's side. Her eyes were closed, her face expressionless. It's too late, he thought. Then her eyes opened and she smiled weakly.
"Hello, darling," she said. "I shouldn't have stopped to gloat over my kill, should I?"
"Oh, Serina, I—"
"I love you."
"Mama," Boxey screamed. He was afraid. He'd learned the truth without anyone telling him. He ran to Serina's bed, had to climb up on the railing around it in order to look at her properly.
"Boxey!" Serina said. "I'm so glad to see you."
Her voice is so weak, Apollo thought. It seems to come from far away.
"I hear you won the whole war," Boxey said.
"Well, I had a little help," Serina said, smiling and touching the boy's cheek. The effort cost her dearly and she dropped her hand suddenly. For a moment life seemed to go out of her eyes.
"Serina," Apollo said, a desperate effort to call her back. It worked, for her eyes came alive again.
"Mama," Boxey said, his voice tearful. "You're going away, aren't you?"
Apollo did not know what to do. He wanted to hold Boxey close, continue to protect him from the truth.
"Yes, Boxey," Serina answered. "I am. But your father will take care of you."
As she said this, she hugged Boxey tightly, as if she didn't ever want to let him go.
"And I'll love you always," she whispered. "You won't forget that, will you?"
Boxey finally could hold back his tears no longer. He said he wouldn't forget. Releasing him a little, she wiped his eyes, saying:
"Is that any way for a junior warrior to act?" Boxey struggled to control his crying, succeeded. "That's better. Much better."
Adama walked up behind Boxey and gently took the boy into his arms. Boxey smiled down at Serina, who said again, "That's better."
After Adama had taken the boy out of the room, Serina said:
"I shouldn't have done that."
Her words confused Apollo.
"Done what?"
"Told him to stop crying, act like a junior warrior. The worst of the so-called male virtues. A grown man doesn't cry and all that. But—but I couldn't stand watching him. I—"
"Take it easy, dear. It's all right."
Now she began to cry.
"No, it isn't all right. It isn't fair. It isn't fair to you."
"To me? If I could trade places—"
She put a hand over his mouth and, with a struggle, stemmed the flow of her own tears.
"I understand," she said. "But I want you to know I feel very, very lucky. Even if all we had was a brief time, it will be—"
"We'll have more time together."
She laughed weakly.
"Please don't, Apollo. You don't believe that. It's only a matter—"
"I do. You've convinced me. A spirit like yours can't end."
Her eyes began to tear up again.
"Oh, that's all right then. I can accept—accept the spirit idea, thank you."
Then a pain surged through her body and she stiffened. She pulled Apollo close.
"I love you," she whispered.
"I love you," he responded, but never knew if she heard him.
He picked up a recording crystal, the earliest, the first one he'd listened to—so long ago now, it seemed. He considered replaying it, hearing her voice again, but realized he could not do that, not now. Carefully, delicately, he replaced all the crystals in the drawer where he'd originally found them.
Somebody had piled her combat outfit on their bed. He had picked it up to fold it away when something fell out of the pocket of her flight jacket—an odd, jagged object. Examining it, he saw it was a potsherd, a piece of what might have been a vase or jar. She must have found it down on Kobol and pocketed it as a souvenir. Holding it now, he became afraid it might break, and he set it on a nearby table with extreme care.
Somebody knocked gently on the compartment door.
"Who is it?"
"Just me. Starbuck."
"What do you want?"
"Somebody here to talk with you."
"I don't want to talk with anybody just—"
"All right then, somebody here who needs you. Open up, damn it."
He opened the door and saw Boxey standing meekly beside Starbuck. The boy looked miserable. Apollo gathered him in his arms and embraced him.
"I'll be down at the . . . I'll be somewhere, if you need me," Starbuck said, and limped down the corridor without waiting for an answer.
Apollo led Boxey into the room. The boy glanced around, his eyes glistening, then he muttered:
"I didn't want her to go."
"I know. But it's her body that's gone, Boxey. Not her spirit or her love for us. We'll have that always."
Boxey nodded slowly. Apollo looked into his eyes. Could he care for this boy? Could he follow Serina's implicit orders and become his father? It didn't seem possible, it'd be too big a responsibility. In his head he could hear his own father telling him there was no responsibility he couldn't handle. Well, maybe he could, maybe he couldn't—the point was, he had to.
Boxey kept rubbing the back of his hand against his tear-streaked eyes.
"I guess . . ." he said. "I guess I won't make a very good warrior."
Apollo remembered Serina's regret at telling the boy that junior warriors shouldn't cry. He hugged the boy close and whispered:
"Son, you'll make a fine warrior. But let's hope you never have to be one. Let's hope—" He stopped talking, held him for a long time, then released him and took his hand. "C'mon, there's a lot to do. Let's go."
Before he closed the door to the compartment, as he thought he saw Serina standing in the shadows, smiling, a shudder went through his body. It was his imagination, of course, but he preferred not to turn on a light to verify that.
EPILOGUE
Lucifer stayed in the shadows, crouching behind a colonnade pillar, for a long while—until he was certain all the humans had shuttled off the planet. He knew it was imperative that he act eventually. The power pack that he had inserted into his chest to enable him to function at this distance from his main units could easily malfunction under such dangerous alien conditions.
It might have been a mistake to travel to the planet himself, an act of illogical bravado accompanying his temporary mania for leadership. He had used the fierce combat in the Kobol skies as a shield for his ship's descent. The portions of his programming that demanded loyalty to Baltar had impelled him to attempt a rescue of the man. It had not seemed a foolish idea at the time, since his task force had clearly been winning the battle. From the abandoned city he had watched the tide turn as the second contingent of colonial vipers had entered the fray. Those humans, whatever their repulsive traits, could certainly fight their way out of a trap against incredible odds. Lucifer could almost admire them. Perhaps the whole race was like Starbuck, a trifle overbearing but clever, amusing, and resourceful. Imagining a whole race of Starbucks, he wondered briefly if he were on the wrong side. However, a fail-safe mechanism clicked in and countered the wayward thought. His allegiance to the Cylon Empire could not be removed without an extensive program restructuring.
Lucifer regretted that Starbuck had been a memb
er of the group who had wiped out his honor guard. A cheerless reunion, not what he had anticipated. All four warriors who had formed the guard lay dead within Lucifer's view. They looked gray, as if the metal of their battle suits had dimmed when they died. What would have happened, Lucifer wondered, if the humans had elected to ferret him out? His linkup to his main units could be stretched just so thin. If the fleet captured him and took him out of range of his base-star, would the break in the linkup send him haywire—would he act like a human suddenly insane? He did not care to speculate on the possibilities.
Time to look for Baltar. Lucifer came out from behind the pillar, the lights of his body and head now restored to full power, now that the threat of attack was diminished.
Signals from a sensor that he had planted on Baltar showed that the human was somewhere in the depths of the vast pyramidal tomb. Not the best place to have to search for anyone, Lucifer thought. As he worked his way through the labyrinths, his memory banks mapping the route, he sensed his power pack straining to function inside the pyramid's thick walls. Just when he thought he might have to abandon the search, he found his quarry. Baltar lay under two crossed pillars, his eyes shut, sleeping quite peacefully. Lucifer shook him awake.
"Lucifer! What in blazes are you doing here?"
"Rescuing you, it seems. Again."
"I'm trapped. Hurt. Get me out of here, immediately."
"By your command."
Activating a stress counterbalance in his arms which allowed him to triple his normal lifting powers, Lucifer easily moved the two pillars off Baltar's legs. Baltar gaped down at his freed limbs, his eyes fearful.
"I—I may never walk again," he whimpered.
Lucifer gave the legs a quick med-scan.
"Your ambulatory abilities will not be hampered. A couple of broken bones, that's all, easy to mend. When we return to base ship, I'll be able to meld them together in no time."
"Return to base ship? How do you propose to do that? Float me out of this lousy tomb?"
"I will carry you."
"How noble of you."
"Yes. We may be able to turn it into legend. Maybe not . . . Legend is easier to formulate when you win the battle."
Battlestar Galactica 3 - The Tombs Of Kobol Page 17